Nature’s World by Al Batt

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. That’s despite the fact that somebody let a Monday in last week and I have such a nasty sunburn that I can’t scratch my poison ivy rash or mosquito bites. Then I’m reminded daily that a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong. John Johnson told me that he had a lawn mower that was bigger than what he once farmed with and that he’d stayed in motel rooms smaller than the cab of his newest tractor. He had a horse and buggy with the sign, ‘Energy-efficient vehicle: Runs on oats and grass. Caution: Do not step in exhaust.’ When he became ill, he bought an exercise bike that he had to store in the basement because it got in the way of his refrigerators. John gave me my first calculator. It weighed 30 pounds and had to be hand-cranked. I’ll miss John. John loved his fast food. Before he died, John requested that his funeral procession, hearse and all, pass through a McDonald’s drive-thru on its way to the cemetery. It was a meal that John didn’t have to cook and didn’t get to eat.”

 

Birding leads to teaching

Charlotte Anderson of New Ulm told me that she didn’t like school when she was a girl. Then her fourth-grade teacher started a bird program for her students. Charlotte loved it.

That caused her to love school.

So much so, that Charlotte became a teacher and taught for over 35 years.

 

Birding in North Dakota

I was with a group of birders in North Dakota, gathered at the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival in Carrington. They had arrived from 20 states and the U.K.

It was a birdy place.

“If you saw a duck fly by, it was a wood duck,” a trip leader advised.

Bill Langford of Camarillo, Calif., thought that over and said, “What was it if you didn’t see it?”

 

Q&A

Kelly Preheim of Armour, S.D., asked if cedar waxwings eat blossoms. Cedar waxwings eat buds, flowers and young leaves. Cedar waxwings eat blossoms most often during their spring migration back to their breeding grounds.

“You wrote about a bird called a godwit. What does ‘godwit’ mean?” The name godwit apparently originated from the Old English with “god” meaning good and “wit” coming from wihte, meaning creature.

John and Betty Nevins of Albert Lea wrote, “We have baby wrens in a house outside of the front door. How long might we expect them to stay in the house?” It is typically 15 to 17 days.

“Do purple martins eat great numbers of mosquitoes?” Purple martins consume large numbers of flying insects. An amateur ornithologist reasoned that a 4-ounce purple martin, due to its high metabolism rate, would have to consume its body weight (14,000 mosquitoes) per day in order to survive. In fact, purple martins feed voraciously upon dragonflies, known predators of mosquitoes. The number of mosquitoes eaten by martins is insignificant, no more than 3 percent of their diets. Martins are daytime feeders and feed high in the sky. Mosquitoes stay low and are most active at night.

“Do bug zappers work?” Insect electrocution devices do kill some mosquitoes. Studies at the University of Notre Dame showed that mosquitoes comprised between 4.1 and 6.4 percent of the daily catch.

There was no significant difference in the number of mosquitoes found in yards with or without bug zappers. What is disconcerting is the number of non-pest insects that comprise the majority of the victims. Many of these insects are beneficial predators of insect pests and constitute part of the diets of songbirds.

Tom Belshan of Glenville asked why mosquito populations vary so much from year to year of similar weather. The mosquitoes that really go after us lay their eggs in low, damp places. Rainfall fills those places and the water remains long enough for those mosquitoes to go through their life cycle in the water. They emerge as adults and start looking for a blood meal. If we don’t get much rainfall, the eggs can stay viable for several years without hatching. If we have dry years, there is an excess of mosquito eggs that have accumulated. Precipitation can cause hatching from eggs that have been dormant for two or three years.

“Do ticks drop from trees?” Depending upon the species, ticks may be found in grass, brush or shrubs, particularly along animal trails and footpaths. They search for hosts by climbing up plants and using their legs to detect a potential host. If you have a tick on your head, it crawled there.

Ferd Stadtlander of Rockford, Iowa, asked how to distinguish a male loon from a female. Male and female common loons look alike, though the males are usually larger than the females.

 

Nature lessons

Most waterfowl species can fly at speeds from 40 to 55 mph.

Eurasian collared-doves spread across North America faster than any bird species on record. They were released from captivity in the Bahamas in 1974, confirmed in Florida in 1982, seen in Montana in 1997, spotted in California in 2001 and nesting in Alaska in 2009. They have traversed the continent in half the time it took starlings and house sparrows.

 

Thanks for
stopping by

“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it.” — Wilferd Peterson

“Bird watching is a bloodless expression of man’s primitive hunting instincts. We have substituted binoculars and cameras for the gun, but we still seek a trophy. A new species on a life list or photographs of one of earth’s rarest and most exquisite creatures. Our search may take us no farther than a nearby meadow or it can lead to the cloud forests of tropical mountains.” — James A. Kern

 

Do good.

 

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. Email him at SnoEowl@aol.com.